Presently, magnetic tapes are used for storage, backup, archiving, and subsequent retrieval of data. In data recording, often a dedicated region or area is located on the tape where special information (e.g., such as information about customers, data, and the tape itself, etc.) is kept. This region or area is widely known as media information region (MIR). A MIR is designed to be small and fixed so as to not take away from the total recording capacity of the tape and is typically set in front or at the earliest detection point of the tape, since it may contain coordinate information for data locating customer data. MIR being fixed in size limits the scope of error recovery options that are afforded to customer data at the expense of overall media capacity.
Furthermore, the special information about customer recorded data is essential for the efficient use of tape by a host and for the integrity of the data. It is generally known that the point on tape first located on a load operation is the preferred place for this data to be placed since it is generally needed before processing customer data and thus, it is necessary to keep this recording short so as to not take the capacity away from the customer recording area. However, keeping the recording short and in a predictable location makes it a recording reliability target. Conventional approaches do not provide for mitigating errors when placing new data on the tape in the midst of old/existing data some of which is bad old data. In other words, conventional approaches do not provide for discriminating between good existing data and bad existing data while new data is placed.